The Tower
by The Carnivorous Muffin
Summary: For she burned too brightly for any world and beneath his skin she still manages to blind him. Alternate Ending episode 13.


She burned far too brightly and that is why she exists in the realm of thoughts now.

The sun's name is Akari and Cerebrum has ensured that all but a few have forgotten this essential fact. Now it is simply the closets star, burning bright over head for half the day, rather than something significant in and of itself. The sun has been removed from the deck, only twenty one paths remain to be taken, one has been cut off.

She still burns inside him, a small condensed whisper of herself, through her light sentience and awareness reaching out through the daemonia. She glows, even when devoured, and the plants still turn towards her with petals filled with fire.

Cerebrum did not intend for these emotions to take root that moment in the cradle, in the realm that exists only in thought and emotion, where a thirteen year old pale and dark eyed Akari Taiyo looked at him with such desperation and said, "End it please, sir."

If there is a card for him it would be the puppet master, the divine manipulator, he who knows all the cards in the deck backwards and forwards until they are no longer cards at all. The best maestros are not swayed by their own music. He plays each card and uses it to assimilate the future, all it takes is a few careful shuffles of the deck and fate is overruled.

Humans are so terribly easy, in the end they're all but screaming at him.

He has trouble thinking Akari ever was human. He remembers her, red hair catching the sun, that small smile and the sense of light in everything she did. He didn't lie to her, she wasn't like the daimonia, she had none of their mindless maliciousness and yet she was far too bright to be human either. At the sight of her humans fell to their knees in worship and madness.

Sometimes, deep within the Astralux, to the place where only the sensation of thoughts exists he catches her eye. Even now she smiles and takes his hand, after all he has done, and says that she understands and that he should have just said what he needed in the beginning. Freedom should not bear such terrible prices.

She is now an irrevocable part of him, we will be one, he had said to her in the grave yard as he held his hand out to her. She is more than just a face, an image he can take, she is his blood the blood of all his people burning so very brightly.

He rarely wears her form now, only when alone, in a room filled with broken glass he stares at the form of the thirteen year old Akari forever immortalized in his thoughts and can't help but think how young she seems.

He was right, he usually is, in that she destroyed her friends without even realizing it. Just as she drove her cousin to madness she has managed to both bless and condemn her friends even after her departure. Temperance has returned from beyond the veil, having defeated her mirror image, and now finds herself purposeless and shaken as the messiah the one thing she fought for has disappeared as well. Star burns with a newly inflamed intensity becoming almost religious in her dogma seeing her comrades fallen arms around her she hastens to become the sun herself but she remains ever distance and her fires will always burn cold. Moon, well the moon has always been lost without the sun.

Luna comes to visit him sometimes, in these bygone years. Japan's branch of tarot users has grown tired in these past years, realizing that unless faced with their doppelganger, this is simply a fight they will never win. There will always be demons, there will always be daimonia. He sees them less and less now, thwarting in his schemes, and when he does see them they appear so very tired. When he sees the moon there is still the wolf in her eyes and it is all but screaming at him.

He and the moon share a special bond, the emperor is still in her stomach, and in some ways she knows him better than any mortal ever will. When she was a wolf he would run his hands through her hair and speak of forbidden places and dreams, all the palaces left to them should they choose to find them, and so it is not a surprise when she manages to track him down years after the event. In her tarot form her ears perk and her fingers have transformed into talons, little Luna has claws now, and she looks at him with all the hatred and bitterness of a lover betrayed.

Surprisingly she doesn't try to kill him.

Instead she has come for something much more fragile, a favor, a face.

She makes love to the shadow of Akari, Cerebrum bearing the scars of her lips and fingers as she seeks that special bond through intercourse, in between them or beyond them Akari is burning ever so brightly. Later when she is staring in shame down at herself he convinces himself that this is why he does it, how easy it is to break her, she does it all herself. Even so though in these moments they are both seeking Akari.

This is not the last time she does this, it is never even close to the last.

It is a game, this never ending war they play, tarot and daemonia all puppets dancing to the organizations whims. He is fully aware of his role even if it does burn him. Even so he has had one victory, one small gain from his ventures, and within his mind it blinds him in the form of a young girl barely aware of herself.

The sun's name is light and how she shimmers how she shines.

**Author's Note: Funny thing, I didn't even like this show that much, but if Cerebrum had been even slightly more self reflective or a little less on the blatantly evil side it could have been redeemed for me. Thanks for reading feel free to leave a review. **


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